GENEVA Dec 5 Indonesia has imposed a 20 percent
emergency tariff on wheat flour imports for 200 days to shield
Indonesian mills from a surge of competition from foreign flour,
it said in a filing to the World Trade Organization published on
Wednesday.

"The very viability of the producers concerned is at stake,
and ... unless provisional safeguard measures are urgently
taken, irreparable damage will result in terms of capacity shut
downs, plant closures and eventual bankruptcy," Indonesia said
in the filing.

Such temporary emergency tariffs are allowed under WTO rules
if a country can show a threat of serious damage to its domestic
industry from an unexpected flood of imports.

The Indonesian Wheat Flour Mills Association (APTINDO) had
asked the government to impose the tariff in August, arguing
that without it, domestic firms would suffer irreparable
damage.

Southeast Asia's largest economy consumed more than 6
million tonnes of wheat in 2011, including imports of about 5.5
million tonnes of the grain and about 680,000 tonnes of wheat
flour, APTINDO says.

Turkey is the largest exporter of wheat flour to Indonesia,
accounting for about 60 percent of the country's imports, with
Sri Lanka making up around 30 percent and Belgium, Australia,
Japan and Ukraine often supplying the rest.
(Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Keiron Henderson)

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